When a play can get the job done in an hour and not short-change the audience in terms of character, language, or story, I’d say we have a winning combination. A local writer has written such a play and if you missed it last July, you have one more week to get to Silver Spring […]
Ro Boddie – at home on stage and now television
The rest of the country is starting to notice Ro Boddie.
Holly Down in Heaven
Holly is a precocious 15-year-old. She knows the fine points of quantum physics, and she’s in her school’s gifted and talented program. She is also pregnant, and a recent convert to born-again Christianity.
How a Carol Channing doll led to Holly Down in Heaven
Forum Theatre’s next undertaking is the ambitious world premiere of Holly Down in Heaven. The tale of young Holly, a brilliant fifteen-year-old born again Christian, who becomes pregnant and confides in her dolls, may not sound like a hilarious and poignant comedy, so check your baggage at the door.
Favorite contemporary plays from the 2011-2012 season
It’s time once again for my annual tribute to new plays and playwrights . These are the relatively recent original plays which made their area debut in the DC area during the 2011-2012 theatre season. Each of these plays brought me joy as an audience member and envy as an occasional writer.
Church
In Church, we go to church. That is to say, we sit in darkness on folding chairs, bathed in religious music, grand and engaging, and beautifully sung by an unseen and uncredited choir.
The Illusion
What is real, imaginary, wishful thinking, dreaming and fantasy when it comes to the mental gyrations of making life choices and dealing with reality? Tony Kushner tackles such heady topics via a 17th century French farce, mixes in love, philosophical musings, and deception, more like self-delusion.
Forum Theatre’s Ninth Season of fresh shows
Forum Theatre’s 2012-2013 season will consist of four plays so fresh that none of them were performed before 2010 and the world premiere which will open the season – Kara Lee Corthron’s Holly Down In Heaven – is only the second-newest piece. Natsu Onoda Power (Astro Boy and the god of comics) will close the […]
Director Jessica Burgess on speaking the language of Cho
“There are sixty nine hundred languages in the world,” according to the linguist George, the central of Julia Cho’s The Language Archive.” Half of them are doomed to disappear in the next century.” But there’s one language that, in this Forum Theatre production, is alive and well: ceaseless bickering among couples entering late middle age.
The Language Archive
Emma (Katie Atkinson), an assistant in a laboratory dedicated to the preservation of dying languages, is trying to learn Esperanto. She is having heavy weather of it. Finally she blurts out “I love George,” – George is her married boss at the lab. The instructor (Kerri Rambow) commands her – in Esperanto, of course – […]
All-star cast to stage reading of The Normal Heart for Forum fundraiser
Forum Theatre will stage a reading of Larry Kramer’s Tony Award-winning The Normal Heart on Monday, November 7 at 7.30 as a fundraiser for the company.
Mad Forest
Revolution. The word is brimming with power, strength, and a sensationalist quality of seduction. America tends to salivate over a good old tale of revolution, sometimes getting so hungry for the next that it neglects to reflect and fully grasp previous movements which have given the world its shape. Perhaps my history classes were too […]